Before Covid, around 70% of organisations globally had a digital transformation strategy, or were working to develop one. Fast forward two years and a solid digital transformation strategy is now fundamental to maintaining a successful business.
However, a recent Standish Group CHAOS survey found that 84% of digital projects fail to meet their objectives, with most delayed, running over budget, and/or failing to deliver on what was promised. Incredibly, 31% of digital projects were either abandoned or cancelled.
Why do digital projects fail on such a large scale?
During my 25 years working in technology, most recently as CEO of mobile app and web development company Vidatec, I’ve witnessed several recurring common errors which can be easily fixed with a little forethought.
Digital projects fail because:
• They are poorly scoped and resourced.
• The end user experience isn’t considered.
• The transformation takes place in a silo without properly considering the context of the organisation, its people and its culture.
• Organisations underestimate the importance of customer and team intimacy. Pressure is often on tech teams to deliver digital projects on a tight schedule, so they tend to jump straight into scoping and resourcing. The danger here is that a group of individuals embark on their own separate journeys to reach a single end point, which can lead to duplication of work, frustration, conflict and project failure.
These problems can be avoided by the adoption of four simple strategies that boards need to ensure are incorporated in any digital transformation plan.
1. Make sure the plan includes time up front for the team(s) to get to know each other properly
Often, there’s such a rush to get plans under way, start delivering and meet deadlines that projects begin without the essential element of awareness in play. Awareness helps individuals better understand their personal preferences and unique styles, as well as those of others, creating more effective ways of working and achieving better business outcomes.
At Vidatec, we begin every project with an Insights Discovery experience. This experience helps team members understand how individuals behave and promotes better team cohesion. We find this upfront investment leads to projects being delivered on time, first time, within budget and ensuring the best possible end-user experience.
2. Ensure projects are properly defined, scoped and resourced
If projects aren’t clearly defined, scoped, and resourced, they could be interpreted any number of different ways—and lead to project failure. For example, if a project aims to improve customer engagement, what does that really mean? Does it mean increasing engagement with marketing activities? Does it mean improving customer sentiment? Or does it mean growing sales?
It’s equally essential to consider the end-user experience during the initial scoping stage. The project team must ensure they understand what the end users want, or at least, are prepared to accept and adopt.
Unless success is defined and agreed, effectively communicated, and adopted across the business, with clearly defined roles, responsibilities and deliverables, the project is likely to fail before it even begins.
3. Collaborate continuously
There are many, many examples where digital initiatives have failed because they were developed as a bolt-on tool by a siloed team.
Any team wanting to deliver a successful digital project must collaborate continuously and a mechanism for doing this should be clearly incorporated into the digital transformation strategy. That includes considering the overall impact on the client organisation, their internal culture, and how their customers will experience it: all must reflect the same image and values.
Put simply, without being connected to all aspects of existing business operations, any innovation is at risk of failing.
4. The devil is in the detail
Your digital strategy should include provision for connecting key personnel from across the business to ensure all aspects of the project are ‘spot on’. It’s about making sure there is detailed knowledge in play around areas such as user personas and branding, as well as app and web design.
Equally, the digital strategy should include checkpoints throughout the project life cycle. I’ve seen plenty of digital projects fail because key personnel have relied on ‘best laid plans’. The board needs to ensure that the project manager and team are incentivised to care about the project and the end outcome—to keep it advancing at pace, and in accordance with the agreed plan.
By incorporating these four simple strategies, you can ensure your organisation’s digital transformation project isn’t one of the 84% that fails to meet objectives or deliver what was promised.
Greig Johnston is CEO at Vidatec